My parents like to make things from scratch. Like, in a serious way. I think they’d churn their own butter if it was remotely practical (I would give my spleen for a GIF of my father churning butter to post right here). My dad grew our potatoes in the backyard, I didn’t have store bought jelly until I was eight, didn’t see fried chicken up close until I was 23.

Thai, Chinese and Indian food, baked goods, pasta*, spinach dip, chips, juice and soda, Cheez-Its, pudding, these are some of my favorite things to make because they were pretty much the only things I remember my mother buying ready-made from the store. And if my mom couldn’t make it, as a kid, I was pretty sure it couldn’t be made. The Sodastream is straight up Harry Potter level magic as far as I’m concerned.

So when BGSK, one of my favorite food blogs had a recipe for fried rice, I couldn’t wait to try it out. Except for I did. ‘Cause people kept eating my rice.

But today the stars aligned and I simultaneously had day old rice and free time. So I took a crack at this. Except I didn’t have mushrooms, so I used a zucchini, and I had some broccoli that was about to go bad, so I threw that in and I added an extra carrot, because I don’t really like carrots unless I can pretend that I’m not eating carrots, and this looked like a great opportunity to get rid of some carrot. I also used half the oil, not because I’m some ridiculous super-virtuous human being, but because I didn’t realize that I’m missing the tablespoon from my set of measuring spoons and had been using the half until I was almost done and nothing was on fire so I just went with it. Have I mentioned I’m bad at following directions?

Oh yeah, I also didn’t cook with salt, because I’m not really into cooking with salt when I’m just cooking for myself. I’ll just add some while I’m eating if I feel like it needs it. It didn’t.

And I made it with brown rice because somebody once told me that white rice sits in your intestines for days and now whenever I think about white rice I think about my intestines, so I don’t eat white rice any more.

And it was delicious. This time of year is my favorite time to eat Zucchini. It’s fresh and ripe but it’s not that part of August where there’s so many of them that you’re like, “OMG if I see another effing zucchini, I’m going to poke my own eye out with it.” Now is also my favorite time to eat cashews. Why? Because all of the time is my favorite time to eat cashews.

Make sure you have a wok or big-ass frying pan, because this is a lot of food. I was skeptical about the “shove all the rice to the side and scramble the eggs” method, but it’s definitely clutch.

With the changes I made, my rice was much more veg-heavy than the original, it also made a lot more. I put the recipe into a nutrition calculator just because I was interested to see how it matched up with the Panda Express of my childhood. Panda Express uses a 9.3oz serving size, which was about what I ate. My/BGSK’s version comes in at 281.8 calories, 13.4 grams of fat, 161.8 mg sodium and 8.7 g protein. The Panda clocks in at 530 calories, 16 g fat, 820 mg sodium and 12 g protein.

I beat the Panda on everything except the protein. Yo Panda, where you getting all that protein?

However, the Panda will always win when it comes to fortune cookie providing, and if that’s a dealbreaker for you, I totally understand.

The likelihood that this rice would be involved in a chain of events where you end up switching bodies with Jamie Lee Curtis is very slim.

*except for Mac and Cheese, Mac and Cheese should always come from a box. Fancypants or homemade Mac and Cheese does not impress me. Unless it comes from S’Mac, which is an entirely different thing. A thing which I am petitioning be added to the Seven Wonders of the World.

Apropos of Nothing: Trashy treadmill TV viewing of the day? Million Dollar Listing on Bravo. Is anybody watching that? The guys are all really boring but I found it strangely engrossing. Also, one of the clients was Carmelita from Dirty Sexy Money. Also? All of those listings are way over $1 million. $1 million buys you like a comfortable one bedroom in the West Village.

Thanks. I lived a couple other places, but I mostly grew up just north of Lansing, why?

Fuzzy wine is not so good, but better than no wine at all. My favorite wine-accident of the summer thus far? I was trying to chill a bottle of dry Riesling fast so I threw it in the freezer. Then I forgot about it for about four hours and when I remembered I had a WINE SLUSHIE!

The zucchini line. I grew up in metro Detroit, and my dad used to grow zucchini (among other things) in the summer. We’d end up with so many ginormous zucchini for our own family, and we’d try to give others (also ginormous) away. Except after a certain point in the summer, no one else wanted them either — because *so many* people were giving away *so many* giant zucchini.

I live in Arizona now, and while we have zucchini available for more of the year, it’s like a trickle of (comparatively) tiny zucchini. So no one here understands the “if I see one more zucchini, I’m going to have to use it for a baseball bat or something” mindset.

I stopped eating meat for the same reason you stopped eating white rice. Also I do like the show “Million Dollar Listing”, but unfortunately I don’t get that where I am. 😦 Your rice concoction sounds good. 🙂